The seven-month outage of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s National Registry of Certified Medical Examiners in late 2017 and half of 2018 has limited the agency's ability to properly oversee its medical certificate program due to missing driver records and outdated medical examiner credentials, according to the U.S. DOT’s Office of Inspector General, who this month released the results of an audit of the program.
Without proper oversight, OIG says FMCSA could be missing medical certificate fraud indicators or other risks, and has less assurance that drivers are physically qualified to drive a commercial vehicle.
"Without fully implementing its requirements for monitoring medical examiner eligibility and performance, including a representative sample of driver examinations, FMCSA may be missing fraud indicators or other risks that may require mitigation," OIG says.
The agency is still working to rebuild the registry after it was hit with a malware attack in 2017. The goals of the audit, OIG said, were to analyze FMCSA’s procedures for overseeing its medical certificate program, specifically for validating and maintaining data quality in the registry and monitoring medical examiner eligibility and performance and reviewing driver exams. OIG initiated the audit in 2019.
Before the seven-month outage, FMCSA required medical examiners to submit driver exam results to the registry once every month. However, during the outage, the agency instructed examiners to hold their results until functionality to the database was restored. The lengthy outage resulted in a backlog of approximately 780,000 driver examination results that were not entered into the registry.
The audit notes that FMCSA is in the process of rebuilding the registry, but it’s unclear when it will be complete, putting the agency’s June 2021 compliance date for the Medical Examiner’s Certification Integration final rule in jeopardy.
FMCSA says it plans to award a contract to rebuild the registry in the second quarter of fiscal year 2021. When the rebuilt registry is complete, OIG says FMCSA plans to publish a Federal Register notice requiring medical examiners upload backlogged exams with a due date. Until then, OIG adds, the information missing from the registry "limits FMCSA’s ability to ensure that driver medical information is valid, complete and accurate."
